Yea detailing can be a real pain epsecially if you dont design for it in mind. Your best bet is to look at maps valve map, some good custom maps, and practice small maps and detail them like make 3 rooms etc and add detailing.

Also you need to make it so all the buildings dont look alike people find it confusing if they cant redily destinquish where they are on your map.

i only have 1 and a half maps to my name, so im not experienced but when i made mine i started with a story-line. Even though story has no bearing what so ever in this game, it's a creative place to start that really opens the flood gates to me. My first map, pl_oversea had a story that there was this shipping dock. Red and Blu teams were once one cohesive work team. But after some arguements the teams split into 2 sides and finally sparked a riot. Blu team wanted to blow up the docks for their lack of treatment by their superiors. Red, trying to protect their jobs tried to defend the docks from the malicious blue team. This all occuring while the CEO's were away on a business trip, thus the perfect time to launch a brawl.

Creating a simple story like that, or something else can imo really set the stage for your design decisions. A dustbowl story line will have a much different layout feel than say a spytech storyline. Create your story, and your setting will follow suit. Just my method behind the madness, just experiment and see what fits your style. Everyone has one, we just may not always find it right away.

Do you do the layout first, then detail? Or detail as you go? Or just make lots of random things and put them together?

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It's best to layout the map with developer textures and test it as-is. Don't even THINK about what it's going to look like, your ONLY priority is gameplay. You don't want to spend days detailing a room only to trash the entire thing later on if it doesn't work.

It's also better to concoct a "gameplay theme" as well as the "aesthetic theme", so I wouldn't advise clumping random things together.

Constructive Criticism is the most useful. If I tear apart your work it's not because I don't like it, it's because I do. If a user's Comment or Post is useful to you, Make sure to give them "Thanks!".

How do you guys manage to find enough people to test a layout only/orange map? I've got a few maps which were nice and textured and it was pretty difficult to get more than 5 people to play it, which made a pretty dismal testing environment, since everyone was changing classes to best deal with a situation, like a SG placement, etc.

The map must be playable. This means fully functional objective system, proper spawns, non-fullbright, etc. The purpose of gameday is to help authors refine their designs, not catch newbie bugs. Maps will be rejected if this is not met.

Submission deadline is 4 PM CDT, 1 day prior.

Submissions for any given day will be on a first come, first served basis.

You may reserve a submission without a download only if you are certain it will be up before the deadline.

Please limit your submission changes. Updating your submission version is allowed if an important issue is discovered, but don't submit early if you will be updating every day with a new version.

The map author may request a team scramble after at least two complete rounds have been played.

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Constructive Criticism is the most useful. If I tear apart your work it's not because I don't like it, it's because I do. If a user's Comment or Post is useful to you, Make sure to give them "Thanks!".

It may sound funny but almost all my inspiration comes from my dreams. Most of them are just random stuff with flying elephants or me flying, but sometimes I just get that feeling 'this could be a detail for my map' (actually this happened to me last night). It is very frustrating sometimes to forget what you,ve seen last night.

If I don't have any clue how to detail some wall etc. I go outside with my camera and start taking pictures of old wooden buildings or anything else. I already have some ideas for my next map which came from our firestation.

Constructive Criticism is the most useful. If I tear apart your work it's not because I don't like it, it's because I do. If a user's Comment or Post is useful to you, Make sure to give them "Thanks!".

Also, TomHoen, I totally agree with Cameron. You should post some of your pictures up! Those could be a huge help to anyone too lazy to walk around with their own camera and take pictures. (I'm not one of these people...only because I can't find my camera.)

The map must be playable. This means fully functional objective system, proper spawns, non-fullbright, etc. The purpose of gameday is to help authors refine their designs, not catch newbie bugs. Maps will be rejected if this is not met.

Submission deadline is 4 PM CDT, 1 day prior.

Submissions for any given day will be on a first come, first served basis.

You may reserve a submission without a download only if you are certain it will be up before the deadline.

Please limit your submission changes. Updating your submission version is allowed if an important issue is discovered, but don't submit early if you will be updating every day with a new version.

The map author may request a team scramble after at least two complete rounds have been played.

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I uploaded a map today that is currently in Alpha 1 (fullbright, however). Assuming that I added lighting (it is otherwise playable), would it be appropriate for a gameday?

As for inspiration, I usually get mine the day after I've played some, while I'm listening to music or on the internet or something. It's sometimes a problem, because I have some of my best ideas while I'm in class doodling.

The rules specifically say no fullbright, I think this is because of how the server works. If your map is fullbright, then all the maps after it are fullbright until the server restarts. I've had a few accidental mapchanges while I was testing maps and let me tell you...all the valve maps look terrible fullbright, and it'd be hard to criticize the lighting of the maps after yours.

As for inspiration while in class doodling...That's way better than my inspiration. Whenever something is due, or there's a test, I feel like mapping. That's actually how I found this community. I've got a math midterm on Wednesday, hahaha.

Going to try to focus on actually mapping AFTER I get done with finals, though. (Hopefully.)

The rules specifically say no fullbright, I think this is because of how the server works. If your map is fullbright, then all the maps after it are fullbright until the server restarts. I've had a few accidental mapchanges while I was testing maps and let me tell you...all the valve maps look terrible fullbright, and it'd be hard to criticize the lighting of the maps after yours.

As for inspiration while in class doodling...That's way better than my inspiration. Whenever something is due, or there's a test, I feel like mapping. That's actually how I found this community. I've got a math midterm on Wednesday, hahaha.

Going to try to focus on actually mapping AFTER I get done with finals, though. (Hopefully.)

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I know that the rules say that you can't have fullbright. I'm asking if it's okay to have really rough, possibly terrible maps on a gameday. I have an alpha 1 map that has gone through no playtesting yet. It has had bug testing, though.

So basically, if it wasn't fullbright, would my map (ctf_railyard_a1) be worthy of being in a gameday?

Also, I'm very similar to you when it comes to deadlines. I have a (admittedly short) paper due Thursday that I should be working on right now.

Sorry about that. I totally missed the part where you said you would put in lights.

It's not against the rules, and I'm pretty positive that's the whole purpose of gameday. There's (probably) no way you'd be able to gather up enough people on a local/listen server to play your alpha map.

Though I just realized you'd have to make sure that your map is big enough for the server.

Sorry about that. I totally missed the part where you said you would put in lights.

It's not against the rules, and I'm pretty positive that's the whole purpose of gameday. There's (probably) no way you'd be able to gather up enough people on a local/listen server to play your alpha map.

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It's fine that you missed it, no big deal.

You're right, I'd never get enough people. The most I could probably get would be 6 including me. That just makes it even better that I found this site. Excuse me, community.